Newsletter Issue #834: Apple TV — What’s the End Game?

Posted By
Gene Steinberg
On
November 23, 2015 @ 12:00 AM
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News |
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Before the fourth generation Apple TV arrived last month, there were huge expectations. While the previous versions of the Apple TV were about testing the waters, the reason the product was referred to as a “hobby,” the 2015 version was supposed to be daringly different. This was the one that Apple was expected to use as the basis for conquering the living room.

Certainly Tim Cook’s statements fueled expectations. He would regularly denigrate the current living room entertainment experience, although he wasn’t terribly specific as to what was wrong. So leave it to Apple to devise a solution that would overhaul the TV industry, or at least that’s what you might have expected.

When Steve Jobs said, as quoted in Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography, that Apple had cracked the secret of the best TV interface ever, it was widely believed that a brand new smart TV was on the horizon. The tech industry was clearly spooked, and one of the larger PC makers even announced a TV, presumably in response. It’s not as if this Lenovo TV concept over made it to market, however.